A Dangerous Crisis In Confidence

The perceived politicization of our Intelligence Agencies has led to a distrust of them as well as of the government and of the Soros owned MSM in general. The entire debacle of rumors, accusations, and outright declarations sans evidence has not served this nation well. This distrust is also very dangerous to our national security. If we cannot put faith in the very people whose job it is to be our watchdogs against threats to our national security, we are standing naked in the wind.

During the Bush administration, many did not believe, rightly or wrongly, the justifications for the war in Iraq and felt it was strictly for the oil. During the Obama administration, it became blatantly obvious that the MSM was behind him all of the way no matter of his egregious dictatorial executive fiats issued in order to bypass Congress. During the 2016 primaries and the election, the media was cheering leading for Hillary and ignoring the ramifications and fallout from her mishandling of classified information on her private server and of the questionable ethics of the Clinton Foundation.

Discerning the truth in any of the above was nearly impossible. Nevertheless, Hillary lost the election. Rather than examine exactly what happened and where they went wrong, Hillary supporters and the Democrats have engaged in a blame game that far exceeds in length and vitriol that of any previous post election analysis by the losing party.Unfortunately, due to their perceived politicization, the intelligence agencies have now been thrown into a "Basket Of Prevaricators" by the general public. This development is very unfortunate for the truly dedicated men and women who serve in them and are distressed by how their agency heads have appeared to capitulate to politics.Reports with no true substance have been released blaming the Russians for tampering with the election; thus, implying that Trump is not a legitimately elected president.The fallout from these events are dangerous to our national security. If America cannot trust the watchdogs against portentous developments to our safety, it is defenseless against any real threats that could lead to tragedy.Perhaps that is the goal of the elites who are very much threatened by a Trump presidency?The following post discusses in detail the holes in the official reports.

U.S. Intelligence Agencies Have No Clothes

The true patriotism, the only rational
patriotism is loyalty to the nation all the time, loyalty to the
government when it deserves it.– Mark Twain, The Czar’s Soliloquy”At this point, pretty much everyone in America has seen the results
of Hillary Clinton media pet, John Harwood’s recent Twitter poll.

The significance of the above cannot be overstated. U.S. intelligence
agencies, like so many other national institutions, have lost nearly
all credibility in the eyes of the American public. The list is long,
but includes economists, politicians, the mainstream media, central
bankers, the financial system, and a lot more. The loss in credibility
is well deserved and has nothing to do with Russia. Rather, it’s a
function of a disastrous 21st century outcome for U.S. citizens both at
home and abroad. A result that was achieved under eight years of
Republican rule and then eight years of Democratic rule. The
results were the same whether a donkey or elephant was in charge,
because the people determining policy behind the scenes never really
changed (same economists, central bankers, intelligence officials, etc),
and the people selling the catastrophic policies to the public
definitely never changes (mainstream media and its worthless pundits).So here we stand at a moment where trust in essentially all U.S.
institutions is at a well deserved all-time low, and the best the
establishment can come up with is to blame Russia. Even worse, those
pushing the whole “Putin is to blame for everything” conspiracy
theories, consistently refuse to back up their assertions with any
evidence whatsoever. In fact, with each passing week the case looks increasingly flimsy,with the latest declassified document issued Friday being particularly
suspect. Even many of those largely convinced of Russia’s meddling in
the U.S. election admit the most recent report was pathetic,
embarrassing and proved absolutely nothing.Robert Parry of Consortium News summarizes the farce perfectly in his recent piece U.S. Report Still Lacks Proof on Russia ‘Hack’. Here’s how he begins the article:

Repeating
an accusation over and over again is not evidence that the accused is
guilty, no matter how much “confidence” the accuser asserts about the
conclusion. Nor is it evidence just to suggest that someone has a motive
for doing something. Many conspiracy theories are built on the notion
of “cui bono” – who benefits – without following up the supposed motive
with facts.But that is essentially what the U.S. intelligence community has
done regarding the dangerous accusation that Russian President Vladimir
Putin orchestrated a covert information campaign to influence the
outcome of the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election in favor of Republican
Donald Trump.Just a day after Director of National Intelligence James Clapper
vowed to go to the greatest possible lengths to supply the public with
the evidence behind the accusations, his office released a 25-page report that
contained no direct evidence that Russia delivered hacked emails from
the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign
chairman John Podesta to WikiLeaks.The DNI report amounted to a compendium of reasons to suspect
that Russia was the source of the information – built largely on the
argument that Russia had a motive for doing so because of its disdain
for Democratic nominee Clinton and the potential for friendlier
relations with Republican nominee Trump.But the report’s assessment is more than just a reasonable
judgment based on a body of incomplete information. It is tendentious in
that it only lays out the case for believing in Russia’s guilt, not
reasons for doubting that guilt.For instance, while it is true that many Russian officials,
including President Putin, considered Clinton to be a threat to worsen
the already frayed relationship between the two nuclear superpowers, the
report ignores the downside for Russia trying to interfere with the
U.S. election campaign and then failing to stop Clinton, which looked
like the most likely outcome until Election Night.If Russia had accessed the DNC and Podesta emails and slipped
them to WikiLeaks for publication, Putin would have to think that the
National Security Agency, with its exceptional ability to track
electronic communications around the world, might well have detected the
maneuver and would have informed Clinton.So, on top of Clinton’s well-known hawkishness, Putin
would have risked handing the expected incoming president a personal
reason to take revenge on him and his country. Historically,
Russia has been very circumspect in such situations, usually holding its
intelligence collections for internal purposes only, not sharing them
with the public.

Another very good breakdown of the clownishness of the latest intel
report was written by noted anti-Putin activist Masha Gessen in The New York Review of Books. Like many others, she finds the obsession with RT within the report bizarre to say the least. She notes:

Finally, the bulk of the rest of the report is devoted to RT, the television network formerly known as Russia Today.A seven-page annex to the report details RT activities, including
hosting third-party candidate debates, broadcasting a documentary about
the Occupy Wall Street movement and “anti-fracking programming,
highlighting environmental issues and the impacts on public
health”—perfectly appropriate journalistic activities, even if they do
appear on what is certainly a propaganda outlet funded by an aggressive
dictatorship. An entire page is devoted to RT’s social media footprint:
the network appears to score more YouTube views than CNN (though far
fewer Facebook likes). Even this part of the report is slightly
misleading: RT’s tactics for inflating its viewership numbers in order
to secure continued Kremlin funding has been the subject of some
convincing scholarship.
That is the entirety of the case the intelligence agencies have
presented: Putin wanted Trump to win and used WikiLeaks and RT to ensure
that outcome.

Indeed, it appears the intelligence community is more concerned that RT is
doing a better job than U.S. journalists at covering issues Americans
care about than it is about Russia “hacking the election.” She also
concludes:

Despite
its brevity, the report makes many repetitive statements remarkable for
their misplaced modifiers, mangled assertions, and missing words. This
is not just bad English: this is muddled thinking and vague or entirely
absent argument…It is conceivable that the classified version of the report,
which includes additional “supporting information” and sourcing, adds up
to a stronger case. But considering the arc of the argument contained
in the report, and the principle findings (which are apparently
“identical” to those in the classified version), this would be a
charitable reading. An appropriate headline for a news story on this
report might be something like, “Intel Report on Russia Reveals Few New
Facts,” or, say, “Intelligence Agencies Claim Russian Propaganda TV
Influenced Election.” Instead, however, the major newspapers and
commentators spoke in unison, broadcasting the report’s assertion of
Putin’s intent without examining the arguments.

Which brings me to the biggest red flag in the entire intelligence report. The part where it states:

We
also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help
President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting
Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All
three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high
confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence.

If any agency should have high confidence it’s the NSA, and pretty
much every security expert I follow seems to agree. First, here’s what
Bruce Schneier wrote in his recent piece, Attributing the DNC Hacks to Russia:

Attribution is easier if you are monitoring broad swaths of the Internet. This gives the National Security Agency a singular advantage in the attribution game. The problem, of course, is that the NSA doesn’t want to publish what it knows.

Isn’t that interesting. The one agency with the most information is
the one least confident in the conclusion. Why only moderate confidence
from the NSA? I wonder.Schneier isn’t the only one of course. As famed NSA whistleblower
William Binney noted in a recent article coauthored with Ray McGovern, The Dubious Case on Russian ‘Hacking’:

With
respect to the alleged interference by Russia and WikiLeaks in the U.S.
election, it is a major mystery why U.S. intelligence feels it must
rely on “circumstantial evidence,” when it has NSA’s vacuum cleaner
sucking up hard evidence galore. What we know of NSA’s capabilities
shows that the email disclosures were from leaking, not hacking.Here’s the difference:Hack: When someone in a remote location electronically penetrates
operating systems, firewalls or other cyber-protection systems and then
extracts data. Our own considerable experience, plus the rich detail
revealed by Edward Snowden, persuades us that, with NSA’s formidable
trace capability, it can identify both sender and recipient of any and
all data crossing the network.Leak: When someone physically takes data out of an organization —
on a thumb drive, for example — and gives it to someone else, as Edward
Snowden and Chelsea Manning did. Leaking is the only way such data can
be copied and removed with no electronic trace.Because NSA can trace exactly where and how any “hacked”
emails from the Democratic National Committee or other servers were
routed through the network, it is puzzling why NSA cannot produce hard
evidence implicating the Russian government and WikiLeaks.
Unless we are dealing with a leak from an insider, not a hack, as other
reporting suggests. From a technical perspective alone, we are convinced
that this is what happened.

Again, if any agency should have high confidence, it is the NSA.Moving along, the U.S. government’s case gets even weaker the more
you dig into it. A perfect example can be seen in how poorly State
Department spokesman Robert Kirby handled a few questions during a
recent press conference. Here’s the clip:

Three major red flags appear in this exchange. First,
Mr. Kirby admits that no evidence has been provided to the public
regarding Russian hacking and distribution of information to Wikileaks,
and that none would be forthcoming.Second, Mr. Kirby repeatedly insists that the fact
“all 17 intelligence agencies” came to the same conclusion should be
sufficient for the American public in the absence of any actual proof.
To this I reply:I don’t know about you, but the fact that seventeen agencies
representing a bipartisan status quo that has been catastrophically
wrong about pretty much everything came to the same conclusion, does not
inspire confidence or credibility in the mind of this citizen.Finally, there’s red flag number three. When AP
reporter Matt Lee follows up wondering why the WMD assessment debacle
holds no relevance to the current intelligence assessment, Mr. Kirby
responds by highlighting all of “the kinds of gains that have been made in intelligence and analysis since then.”Here’s the problem. The Director of National Intelligence (DNI),
James Clapper does not have clean hands when it comes to the WMD affair.
He also blatantly lied to the American people with regard to NSA
surveillance before being called out by Edward Snowden. As Binney and
McGovern explain:

Mr.
Trump’s skepticism is warranted not only by technical realities, but
also by human ones, including the dramatis personae involved. Mr. Clapper has admitted giving Congress on March 12, 2013, false testimony regarding the extent of the National Security Agency’s collection of data on Americans.
Four months later, after the Edward Snowden revelations, Mr. Clapper
apologized to the Senate for testimony he admitted was “clearly
erroneous.” That he is a survivor was already apparent by the way he
landed on his feet after the intelligence debacle on Iraq.Mr. Clapper was a key player in facilitating the fraudulent intelligence. Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put Mr. Clapper in charge of the analysis of
satellite imagery, the best source for pinpointing the location of
weapons of mass destruction — if any.When Pentagon favorites like Iraqi émigré Ahmed Chalabi plied U.S. intelligence with spurious “evidence” on WMD in Iraq, Mr.
Clapper was in position to suppress the findings of any imagery analyst
who might have the temerity to report, for example, that the Iraqi
“chemical weapons facility” for which Mr. Chalabi provided the
geographic coordinates was nothing of the kind. Mr. Clapper
preferred to go by the Rumsfeldian dictum: “The absence of evidence is
not evidence of absence.” (It will be interesting to see if he tries
that out on the President-elect Friday.)A year after the war began, Mr. Chalabi told the media, “We
are heroes in error. As far as we’re concerned we’ve been entirely
successful.” By that time it was clear there were no WMD in Iraq. When
Mr. Clapper was asked to explain, he opined, without adducing any
evidence, that they probably were moved into Syria.

To conclude, I certainly think it is important to know if the Russian
government hacked the DNC/Podesta and then handed that information to
Wikileaks. Likewise, such an explosive claim necessitates publicly
available evidence given the horrible track record of U.S. intelligence
agencies. Until such evidence is made available I, like
countless other Americans, will tend to believe Wikileaks, which has a
track record of proving its claims and being accurate, as opposed to
U.S. intelligence, which doesn’t.Source: Zero Hedge

Knowledge is power.The Realistic Observer is a non-partisan, non-profit blog dedicated to keeping our readers as informed as possible.

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